THERE are many definitions of marketing but let's agree for the moment that marketing is "the management process that identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer requirements profitably".
Marketing isn't easy and the issue of 'anticipation' is particularly difficult, especially so in the field of technology, where forecasting anything beyond three years is effectively crystal ball-gazing.
Never mind the mists of time when I was at university, just consider 10 years ago.
There was no such thing as Twitter. Facebook was only open to students at a selection of US universities. There was no Gmail or Google Maps. The iPhone hadn't been released and Blackberry and Nokia were still thriving. There was no App Store or the multi-billion dollar economy which accompanies it. Marketing technology implementations took months, not the moments they do now. Online marketing meant you had your catalogue on the web and we used search engines such as Excite and AltaVista. Google launched in 1998 and the rest is history, but what of the future? Ten years ago we couldn't have conceived of well over 600 million internet users in China, with a choice of search engines. Here we see Facebook declining and who knows the future of Twitter? Google doesn't seem to have replaced LinkedIn as some had predicted, but being Google, they're not going to give up easily. We now grapple with Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, and Snapchat. Which will be here in five years, let alone 10?
I attended a CIM event recently where delegates were discussing what exactly 'marketing' means. You couldn't imagine a meeting of accountants worrying about what accountancy meant, nor engineers, architects or lawyers worrying about the definition of their professions.
Marketing is sometimes called a 'synthetic subject' because it includes elements of anthropology, psychology, economics and sociology, so is the problem that 'marketing' is uniquely difficult to explain? If we cannot adequately explain what marketing is in practice today, what hope have we of anticipating its role in the future? Or do we have the confidence in our chosen profession to demonstrate the power of marketing?
So what will marketing look like 10 years from now? How will we be working in 2025? What tools will we have at our disposal?
Will marketing be marginalised, perhaps a specialism within the IT department? Or will marketing have claimed its rightful place at the heart of the business, driving competitive advantage, making best use of 'big data' and, importantly for professional marketers, doing so in an ethical way? Who will 'win' the privacy battle? On the one hand we're all concerned about privacy, yet many seem willing to display their heart and soul for all to see online. In 10 years will we have regained control of our data, but at the same time started selling it? You want my personal details? Fine. What's it worth?
Will it be inconceivable that a board of directors does not include at least one professional marketer or will we remain 'the colouring in' or 'spending' department?
CIM (The Chartered Institute of Marketing) is the world's largest professional body for marketing, and wants to tackle these questions in a collaborative way and has launched its biggest online conversation around #marketing2025 - an ambitious and global open-innovation initiative about the future of marketing.
Its goals are to establish the definitive list of 'big questions' facing marketing - what are the issues and opportunities that can make or break marketing over the next decade?
The online discussion has the potential to generate thousands of practical ideas for tackling marketing's 'big questions'. CIM will identify the most promising ideas and develop them, testing them in real-world experiments. Marketing2025 will be tapping into the collective intelligence of thousands of passionate marketers. You can join the debate at www.marketing2025.com, or the LinkedIn group 'Cim Community, Ireland' and follow @CIMInfo_Ireland #marketing2025 to help shape the future of the marketing profession.
* Richard Houdmont is Ireland director for the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Visit www.cim.co.uk for more information. Follow @ CIMInfo_Ireland #marketing2025 and help shape the future of the profession.
* CHANGING TIMES: Social media and search engine sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google are important marketing tools in today's world, but nobody can really predict how things will evolve or the next 10 years